How Brut IPA became San Francisco's newest beer style

1of3Social Brewing's Kim Sturdavant is widely credited with pioneering the beer style. Pictured is one of its brut IPAs, Puttin' on the Spritz.Photo courtesy of Social Brewing2of3One of Magnolia Brewing's brut IPAs is pictured in the company's San Francisco brewhouse.Photo courtesy of Magnolia Brewing3of3One of Cellarmaker Brewing's brut IPAs, called Less Than Zero, was a collaboration between Social Brewing and Temescal Brewing.Photo courtesy of Cellarmaker Brewing

If you stick your nose into the glass, you might detect hints of citrus, gooseberries, white grapes, and a bit of petrol. It’s pale as straw, bone dry and gives the impression of effervescence. It’s a brut, of course, but not of the variety that Champagne lovers seek.

It’s a brut beer, and Social Brewing’s Kim Sturdavant made it.

The San Francisco brewer was, as far as he knows, one of the first (if not the first) to serve up the style — which he dubbed the brut IPA — late last year; since then, the style of beer has bubbled up at a number of California’s top craft breweries. Using an addition of an amylase enzyme, which breweries more often employ to lighten up the body of heavy stouts and porters without watering down the alcohol percentage, Sturdavant decided to apply it to a more approachable beer, made with extremely light malts and on occasion, flaked rice or corn.

“I had it in my head: What would happen if I used this (enzyme) with a smaller beer, like an IPA, to make a basically sparkling hop beverage with no sweetness in it?” he says. “And I was thinking about it for a year or so before I actually squeezed it in the schedule and was able to brew one.”

The drinkable, light-bodied dry brut IPA has little to no bitterness — most of the hopping is done post-boil just for added aroma. It’s a unique style that, in many ways, is a response to both the classic West Coast IPA hop bombs and the hazy, pillowy New England-style IPAs currently proliferating on beer menus around town.

“They’re inevitably going to be really refreshing to drink and probably easy to drink more of,” he says. “When you drink an extra brut IPA, you look down and your glass is already half gone. It’s kind of the refreshing sparkling wine elements in a beer form. It’s easy to drink and also, the balance is different because it’s all about the hops.”

Local brewers took notice of Sturdavant’s experiment, and chief among them was Tim Sciascia, head brewer at SoMa’s Cellarmaker Brewing. Sciascia, who uses the enzyme in his brewery’s popular 14.5 percent coconut imperial stout (Blammo!), had once chatted with Sturdavant about the idea, and wanted to give it a go too.

Sciascia has now brewed two brut IPAs — one with Winters’ Berryessa Brewing, and the other with Social Brewing and Oakland’s Temescal Brewing. “It’s a fun twist on what we already know,” he says. “We’re always looking for different ways to experiment and switch things up a little bit.”

Like Sciascia, Sturdavant has so far used primarily used hops that present as fruit-forward and white wine-like, but the Social brewer believes the new style has a lot of versatility.

“It’s almost like a puzzle,” Sturdavant says. “I think other brewers are excited about it because it’s like this challenge, like can you make a beer with no body, no residual sugar and a whole bunch of hops and make it taste really nice and not too bitter.”

Lead brewer Seth Wile takes a sample of beer while working at Magnolia Brewing Company, in San Francisco, California, on Wednesday, July 27, 2016.Gabrielle Lurie/Special to The Chronicle

One of the brewers up to the task is Seth Wile, of San Francisco’s Magnolia Brewing. But unlike Sturdavant and Sciascia, Wile is eschewing juicy hops in favor of spicier, more floral hops.

“We’re going a bit of a different direction,” Wile says of the hop profile of his brut IPAs. “I know a lot of people have been using heavy-hitting hops, as I would call them, but next time we’re trying Citra in moderation, mixed with a couple noble (and German) hops. That’s kind of a blend of new-age, fruity hops and the old, subdued floral spice of noble hops. We’re excited how it’s tasting out of the fermenters so far.”

Wile had pitched making a brut IPA to Dick Cantwell (who took over Magnolia following the brewery’s 2017 New Belgium acquisition) after Sturdavant visited the pub. Cantwell, who Wile notes is interested in the “weirder, more experimental” styles, immediately took to the idea.

“People are kind of latching on in the Bay Area; it could become a thing,” Wile says. “To be on the forefront to help develop a new IPA style, a completely original one that might be native to San Francisco now, I think that excites all of us.”

The non-profit Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP), whose beer style guidelines are widely utilized in competitions across the country, is less enthusiastic about defining trendy styles. As a result, the organization isn’t yet ready to recognize Social and San Francisco as the inventors of a new take on an IPA.

“Oftentimes, special beer releases like this end up more as passing fads than beer styles with longevity,” says Dennis Mitchell, the Communications Director for the BJCP. “I've seen quite a few breweries try to advertise IPAs using different names or claiming to be different styles, and many times these beers would still fall within or near the current guidelines for American IPA. I'm not saying that is the case here, especially since I have not tried any of these beers, but it's just something noteworthy that we've seen before.”

It may indeed be a fad, but it’s one that’s nevertheless gaining some traction outside the Bay Area as well. Sturdavant has tallied around a dozen breweries since December that he knows have already tried producing the style or have something in the works, including San Francisco’s Triple Voodoo Brewery, Los Angeles’ Eagle Rock Brewery, and Liar's Bench Beer Co. in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

The brewers seem to like it, but when it comes to brut IPAs being he next big thing for consumers, Sturdavant’s less sure. “I think a lot of people will be ready for it because it’s something new and different than the New England-style stuff people are drinking right now,” he says. “I don’t know. Time will tell.”

Alyssa Pereira is a culture editor and contributing beer writer for SFGATE. She previously worked for CBS San Francisco and SPIN Magazine and has contributed to Good Beer Hunting, Paper, Vice's i-D and Paste, among others. She is a Bay Area native and graduated from New York University and SFSU.